Park Fellow Alumni Profiles

Elisa Dobbins, MBA '12

The Park Fellows program gave me the tools to fully embrace my true leadership style and learn how to then lead effectively. Being able to work on leadership skills with your trusted cohort allows you to take risks in a safe environment, setting you up for success once you enter the real world. My Park projects allowed me to use my newly strengthened leadership skills and to give back to the community, all at the same time. I was truly blessed to be a part of such a remarkable group of individuals and I am so grateful to have had this opportunity!

Pre-MBA Employer:

Blackboard (Financial Operations)

Park Project:

In January 2012, the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) approved plans to merge with the Cayuga Nature Center (CNC). Additionally, PRI's Museum of the Earth (MOE) also had to be considered in this merger. These organizations have partnered to create unified programming, yet all three have distinct target consumers and offer different value propositions to its respective customers. The task was to recommend a visual that conveys the merger, and provide guidance about how to rebrand this new and improved organization to the Ithaca community and beyond. The Fellows provided a preliminary recommendation about the direction of the logo design by examining the pros and cons of various case studies that considered a) adopting one logo, b) combining logos, and c) creating a completely new logo. Furthermore, as they spoke with and surveyed employees, they learned that employees lacked an understanding of why the merger occurred so they worked to close that gap too.